Addiction: Causes

The cause of addiction has sparked countless debates over the years. There is no single cause of addiction. Some factors can make someone predisposed to addiction, but not all who have the predisposition for addiction develop the condition. Meanwhile, someone who has no such predisposition may be triggered into developing an addiction.

There are two general causes of addiction: the physical and the psychological. There are also theories (with supporting studies) that indicate genetics play a major role in someone’s susceptibility to addiction.

Physical and Psychological Addiction

While it is true that physical dependence is always accompanied by psychological dependence, psychological dependence is not always accompanied by physical dependence.

Physical addiction refers to the condition where continued use is necessary for satisfaction and gratification. This is especially applicable in the case of drug addiction where undesirable neuroplasticity or brain reorganization occurs as a result of continuous, repetitive drug use. In a manner of speaking, your brain gets rewired – new neural pathways are opened and defective (abnormal) brain signaling takes place – so that the brain’s reward center no longer works as they used to. You will no longer feel any or as much pleasure in the things that you once found pleasurable such as food, sex and other people’s company. To feel gratified, you will need to use drugs. In the end, you will get physically addicted to the act of drug use itself. Even if the euphoria you feel from drug use no longer equals that which you felt when you first started using drugs, it wouldn’t matter. You’ll value your next drug intake more than anything – more than food, family, life, and health; you would have to use drugs or you would be miserable.

Psychological factors are also among the main causes of addiction. Depression, family problems and emotional turmoil can drive you towards activities and things that will make you forget your problems or take your mind off your depression or emotional turmoil.

Abuse is also another common cause of addiction. A person who has experienced any form of abuse – whether psychological, emotional, physical, or sexual – may turn to recreational drug use or other forms of addictive behaviour as a defense or coping mechanism. Abuse victims would rather spend their days dazed and insentient rather than be sober and keep thinking about the injustice done to them. To keep feeling the hurt, the shame and the guilt all over again.

Doing something or taking something constantly to bring relief or forgetfulness can lead to psychological addiction – that is, you become psychologically conditioned to feel pleasure, relief from pain, validated, or fulfilled only if you do the activity or take the substance again. Even if the brain still hasn’t been rewired physically, you have already been psychologically conditioned to associate gratification with that activity or product to which you are addicted. This causes and reinforces addiction and sooner or later, physical addiction will set in and further exacerbate the problem.

Genetics Play a Role

Our genes also play a very important role in addiction. Certain genes and certain gene configurations can affect our predisposition to addiction. To put it simply, the presence of certain genes (e.g. risk-taking behaviour, gene for neurotransmitter production, gene that regulates reward, etc.) and in certain combinations means some people are more likely to become addicted than others.

The genes that have been passed on to us by our parents have a lot to answer for. In fact, it has been noted that if the cause for some people’s predisposition toward addictive behaviour is to be explained, genetic considerations would be one of the most major factors; it does in fact account for around forty to sixty percent.

Genes play a role in predicting future behaviour. They have been shown to be one of the causes of addiction. They will explain why one person who drinks wine everyday at the dinner table does not get addicted to alcohol (he is just as happy and just as lively if he eats dinner with a friend who practices abstinence), when another who has started drinking alcohol just a few months ago suddenly cannot sleep if he doesn’t have a drink beforehand or would rather lose his job than miss his daily Johnny Walker date.

Nevertheless, even if genes can increase our susceptibility to addiction, it is never a definite predictor of actual addiction behaviour.

If your parents are addictive and have the genes that predispose a person towards addiction, this does not mean you will automatically get the same level of predisposition towards addiction. Remember that we do not manifest all but only some of all of our inherited genes. The genes that predispose one to addiction may be inactive in your case.

Furthermore, the presence of certain addiction-predisposing genes – even the presence of all the genes that can possibly create the greatest amount of predisposition to addiction – does not mean certain addiction. It only means you are more susceptible to addiction than most. In other words, do not touch addictive substances and you should be fine.

The Environment

Children who grew up in an environment where their supposed role models display addictive behaviour, they have a much higher likelihood of developing addictive behaviour themselves. In other words, the environment also predisposes one to addiction. One who grows up in a family where smoking is discouraged is probably not going to be a smoker whereas one who grows up in a family of smoker is much more likely to be a smoker.

Just like in the case of genetics, however, your environment may predispose you towards addiction but this does not mean that you will certainly develop an addiction.

Peer pressure is also a very important factor. It accounts for a large percentage of addiction incidence rates worldwide, especially in adolescents. In a study conducted in USA, results show that 20% of teenagers have tried smoking pot after reaching adolescence largely due to the influence of their peers.